Verizon Says They "Could Handle" iPhone in 2010

Reports have been coming for some time that the exclusive deal Apple negotiated with AT&T will end in the coming year. Without knowing for sure if that will come to pass, though, Verizon Wireless says it's ready. According to a senior executive, the carrier has made the changes it would need to make to its network in order to handle what would obviously be a new surge in data traffic.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” Verizon Wireless CTO Anthony Melone told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The second-largest carrier in the United States has been buying other companies to augment its network operations, having paid $27 billion to buy Alltel this year. In picking up the rural carrier, it's added a network with good coverage in the Southeast United States as well as California, Nevada, and Arizona.

Verizon has spent about $19 billion on its network over the past three years, while AT&T has actually spent less on its network since the iPhone launch than it had before. While AT&T was recently rated the worst carrier in terms of customer satisfaction, Verizon took first place in that survey "It comes down to backing that process with money," Melone told BusinessWeek. "We've been more consistent than any carrier in the last 10 years investing year over year."

Making the iPhone compatible Verizon's CDMA network would require completely different hardware than the current UMTS/GSM device. It's been rumored that a dual-mode phone - with a new chip made by Qualcomm - is being prepared for the second half of next year. It's unknown if such a phone would be ready in time, but obviously Verizon is not waiting to find out.